Jake Keeler from the American Homebewers Association and a former Brewing TV cast member joins me this week to talk about the changes we’re seeing in homebrewing as well as homebrew supplie. This episode was recorded directly on the expo floor at the National Homebrew Conference in Grand Rapids, Michigan.
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Topics in This Week’s Episode (28:11)
- Jake Keeler from Brewer’s Supply Group (BSG) and a former cast member on Brewing TV joins me this week to discuss trends in home brewing as well as home brewing supplies. Jake is a member of the American Homebrewer’s Association Governing Committee and shares with us some of the big issue in brewing.
- This week’s episode is sponsored by Craft Beer and Brewing Magazine – get a 20% discount with the offer code ‘beersmith’ if you sign up today for your subscription!
- And also sponsored by the new How to Brew videos with John Palmer and Brad Smith on malt extract and all grain brewing – coming in July. You can also watch the trailer for the first video mentioned in the show at that link.
- And the American Homebrewer’s Association forum is also sponsoring this week’s episode. Join over 22,000 brewers talking about brewing online at HomeBrewersAssociation.org
- Jake talks about the sweeping change we’re seeing in the last few years from extract to all grain and how many brewers are starting all grain earlier, and even skipping extract brewing completely
- We talk about other trends in brewing including mini-batches and Brew-in-a-bag
- Jake and I discuss the challenges of bringing more casual brewers into the hobby
- We switch to discussing ingredients and supplies and why the supply chain from producer to consumer is very important for beer brewing ingredients
- Jake explains why home brewers are often at the tail end of the supply chain
- Jake discusses some of the efforts ongoing at his new company, BSG to improve the quality of ingredients going to the home brewer
- We talk about overall industry growth which has been unprecedented the last five years, and whether it is sustainable
- Jake discusses some of the issued the AHA governing committee has been working recently
- We discuss the home brew conference briefly
Thanks to Jake Keeler for appearing on the show and also to you for listening!
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Interesting discussion with Jake. Just wanted to share my experience with converting Mr. Beer brewers to full process homebrewing.
I have two friends that I’ve converted from Mr. Beer to extract brewing (one has moved on into all grain). Mr. Beer got them interested in the process of making beer, and I used that to open their eyes to the larger world. I bought both folks Papazian’s “Joys of Homebrewing” and told them to read it… paying attention to the beginner and intermediate brewer sections. I encouraged them to brew, even in small batches. I had them over to help with my batches and they really got into the process and just how fun it is. When they tasted their first “real” homebrew, they never went back to Mr. Beer.
The work that Jake, John Palmer, Charlie P., yourself and so many others is vitally important as well. It gives the schlubs like me a place to refer our friends to to learn more about brewing beer. It’s a community, we all know that, and we all need to make the community welcoming for the new folks… it can be daunting and sometimes the forums can put a noob off.
Anyway, that’s my input. Cheers!
Mike Benoit
Little Red Chevette Brewing and Padre’s Ales